Absence_Whispers and Shadow

by J. B. Forsyth

  Another aspect of his character I find a little disconcerting is his apparent immunity to fear. He shows no symptoms of it whatsoever. I have never seen anyone navigate the warrens beneath Rockspur with such calm confidence. I wondered if this would make him a risk taker, but his uncanny fearlessness is offset by a pure rationality of the mind.

  These concerns have given me deep reservations about approving Ormis for investment, but taken with his positive attributes I don’t think he is a man we can pass on. He is diligent and honest and as you can see his test scores are outstanding. Of special note are his purge and his faultless knowledge of the Calista. Vish Peshgar tells me that Ormis is only the seventh person to score a full five for the purge in the three hundred years we have been recording it! On balance I approve Ormis’s investment into our order. He would be a worthy wearer of the mist stone and an asset to the Caliste.

  Avol Irlan

  Spirit Demon

  Ormis slept. He was nine years old and the last pleasant dream of his life was about to go bad.

  He rode his father’s horse Bo, bent low over his flowing mane, pushing him hard across a field. Trees blurred by on either side and the summer breeze rippled his shirt and tossed his hair. He thundered towards the rushing waters of Highbred River, lining up for a jump. It was an impossible leap for any horse, but he kept Bo on course and dug his heels into his side. When the ground fell away they jumped over the glimmering expanse - seemingly in the air forever. They just made it and as Bo’s hooves thundered down on the far bank, he sunk down in his saddle. He laughed and turned a left arc toward a mighty hedgerow. Any jump was possible now. From both sides, dozens of white rabbits rushed out of their warrens to accompany him on his charge and it was like he was at the centre of a wide foaming wave, surging across the field. The hedgerow loomed and his hands tightened on the reins…

  But now there was no jump. No rabbits beside him and no horse beneath him.

  Darkness…

  His eyes flicked open and he was laid on the stony river bed, submerged in its icy water. Through its rushing surface he could see the bleary eye of the moon, mocking him from a black sky.

  A vicious cold swept into him…

  So cold...

  So very cold…

  Without shutting his eyes, he opened them again, so wide that they strained their sockets. A great spasm wracked his body, lifting his hips and transforming him into an arch of flesh and bone, his weight supported by only his heels and the base of his skull. He gripped his sheets and his left thumbnail gouged the inside of his index finger until it became slick with blood. His neck muscles stood out like bowstrings and his teeth ground together. For a time, all he could do was suffer - his chest heaving and his breath moving in and out through a throaty buzz of pain. It felt like a million ice crystals were forming inside him.

  The seizure released him and he dropped back to his sheets, bouncing Rag Cat out of bed. Starved of air he drew in a breath so deep, it was like he took it right down to his feet. His chest tugged again and again, but he was unable to give full volume to the word he was trying desperately to bawl. ‘Mu…Mu…Muuum...’ Nothing more than a series of panting articulations that lacked the power to reach beyond his room.

  On some level he was aware of what was happening. A spirit had come into his bedroom after he fell asleep and now it was invading his body. At school they talked about possessions and even had a game for them - taking turns to be a host and chasing each other in order to pass the spirit on. But the screwed up faces and flailing arms they used to act out the moment of possession spoke nothing of what he was feeling right now. It was like his body was a glove and the spirit a set of icy fingers, thrusting into it.

  He continued to thrash, fighting the potentially fatal symptoms of what the exorcist’s called transition - a time during which his body’s allegiance would be decided. It should have been over quickly except that he was resisting with an outwards force that originated from the centre of him – a force exerted not by muscle, but with a contraction of his mind. The reflex was triggered the moment the spirit entered him and was fighting back before he even opened his eyes. The exorcists would have called this reflex a purge and he used the full force of his innate ability to expel the spirit; his sweat thickening to beads and the veins on his temples squirming like trapped worms. He purged his would be possessor and it peeled off him like a frozen leech. Warmth flooded his body and his eyes watered with a relief beyond any he had ever experienced.

  His eyes tried to focus on the roof beams above him, but it was like he was looking at them through curved glass. The distortion moved away, warping the beams and when it drifting down to the foot of his bed he jerked up and balled himself tight against his headboard. It bulged towards him, becoming more like a transparent membrane into which something was pressing. Then it recoiled into a flat disc and whatever was behind it surged forward again, so forcefully it was like a living ice sculpture had appeared in his room. But it had no body, just a pair of hovering claws and a long wolf like head. Its snout split wide and the membrane between its jaws was drawn into taut strands. It roared its frustration and Ormis screamed a note that scraped every corner of the house. Claws and snout whirled away in a blur and a second later his chamber pot arced across the room and exploded against a wall. And before the shards could settle, his little stool spun off its legs and crashed into a splintered heap.

  The bedroom door burst open and his father stormed in, the axe he kept under his bed drawn back over his shoulder. Hair that moments earlier had been pressed against his pillow was now stuck up like a fan. He planted himself at the foot of the bed, bracing himself as the rocking chair he carved for his son smashed against the wall. His head whipped around, tracing its trajectory backwards, but he saw nothing.

  His mother appeared at the door, gripping the neck of her nightgown. She saw him cowering on the bed, but as she rushed to him his father jerked into her with a cry of surprise. She followed his gaze and let out a scream that rivalled the one that woke her up.

  With the true nature of their intruder revealed the fight drained out of his father in an instant. Like most nine year olds Ormis didn’t think his dad was scared of anything. But what he saw in his face now told him he might have been wrong. It was a revelation that was somehow worse than anything that preceded it and for one terrible moment he thought he would run away.

  But his father’s wobble was short lived. He was a man of substance and one glimpse at his terrified son was all he needed to draw courage. With a self-bolstering roar, he lunged forwards, swinging his axe. ‘Get out of my house!’ he bellowed. ‘And stay away from my son.’ But his axe cut nothing but air – it was a brave yet futile assault and the apparition mocked him with wolverine laughter.

  His mother was also quick to recover, but as she rushed to Ormis’s side she was blindsided by an invisible force that ripped her away; lifting her clean off her feet and propelling her out through the window with a huge splintering of wood and crashing of glass. His father turned at the sound, unaware in his frenzied charge that the spirit had slipped around the back of him. ‘It got mum,’ Ormis said, as he looked at the patch of night framed by the broken window. His body was rigid and his eyes as big as bed knobs.

  His father lowered the axe and took four dazed steps to the window as the night air rushed in and blew in his face. In what seemed like an enormous call on his resolve he inched his head out over the jagged glass and peered down. In his mind’s eye Ormis could see what he thought his father was seeing: the woodpile below the window and his mother’s broken body upon it. But then his father stuck his head further out, turning it from side to side as if searching. ‘She’s gone!’

  Though it was news beyond all hope, Ormis couldn’t understand how it could be. He knew that anyone launched with such violence through a first floor window had no right to be anything but a crumpled heap. As his father turned from the window a loud thud from downstairs welded their eyes together. A rattle of met
al followed, then a louder thud and splintering of wood that shook the house. The ensuing silence was enormous and in it Ormis pictured his mother standing at the broken door with the cold eye of the moon shining over her shoulder.

  But he had no urge to run to her.

  He knew something was wrong and when he heard the terrible skittering in his father’s voice, he knew he did too. ‘W…Wait here son. And don’t you move till I tell you to.’

  His father raised his axe and crept out of his bedroom door, taking up position at the top of the stairs. From his angle on the bed he couldn’t see what his father was seeing, but from what he saw in his face he was glad of it.

  As Garel Brathra peered into the darkness of the ground floor one of the shadows separated from the rest and began to climb the stairs. The old wooden steps creaked in turn as the figure of his wife resolved in the darkness. Her head was hanging and her long hair draped her face. ‘Joannah… Are you hurt?’

  She took four more steps, each one accompanied by an ominous clonking sound as something in her hand caught against the spindles. When she stepped into the weak light that radiated from their bedroom she stopped, the sickle in her hand shining like an icy grin.

  Garel took an instinctive step back and raised his axe a little higher. ‘Joannah! What’s wrong with you?’

  She lifted her head and her hair fell from her face, exposing a dark trickle running down her forehead. It dripped off and pattered on the steps. Pap…pap…pap.

  ‘Joannah love. You’ve hurt your head… Are you alright? ... Speak to me… Joannah?’

  She opened her eyes and they were bright blood blisters bulging in their sockets. He jerked back as she raced up the last few steps, reaping with her grinning blade. He brought his axe up just in time and her swiping sickle clocked against the handle, its curved edge reaching around almost to his ear. She hacked again and again, her face fixed in an expression of indifference - like a wooden marionette oblivious to the violent tugging of the puppet master’s strings. She forced him back and when he struck the wall she thrust her head forward and bit him, sinking her teeth deep into his forearm. He roared in pain and released the axe, using his other hand to thump repeatedly at her head. It was enough – too much perhaps and she fell in a heap at his feet.

  When he reached down to turn her over he heard Ormis crying. Until that moment his son had experienced nothing between them but an occasional harsh word. ‘She’ll be right,’ he panted, though he wasn’t sure himself. ‘She’s just knocked out… Help me get her downstairs.’

  Ormis stared at him, watching the blood run down his arm.

  ‘Come on son! We gotta do this now if we’re gonna help her.’ His father’s tone was desperate and it managed to get him moving. He slipped from the bed and went to him, jittering like a nervous squirrel. ‘Get her legs.’

  He lifted her by the crooks of her knees and his father grabbed her under the shoulders. She sagged as they carried her downstairs, her back bumping the risers and her long hair stroking every step. Her bare legs were caked with mud and they smeared his white nightshirt where they rubbed against him. They stumbled into two chairs in the darkness of the sitting room, but the light was better in the scullery as the moon was high and its silver light streaming in through the window. They lowered her to the floor just as his grip failed and he saw that the exertion had done little to calm his shaking hands. His father lit the wick on the table lamp and light bloomed.

  ‘Are you sure she’s alright?’ he asked as his father began rifling through drawers and cupboards. ‘She looks dead.’

  His father turned to him with the length of rope he had been looking for in his hand. ‘She’s not dead son. Just do as I say and she’ll be alright.’ He handed him the lamp. ‘Take it to the cellar and hang it some place high. Quickly now.’

  Ormis was agape at the idea. He didn’t like to go down into the cellar in the middle of the day, let alone in the dead of night - it smelt damp and he sometimes heard rats scurrying around in the corners. But his father opened the cellar door and ushered him in, giving him no time to think about it. He went down into the gloom with his orb of lamplight thrust out in front of him. The steps were rough and grimy on his bare feet and as he descended the subterranean cold chilled him through his damp nightshirt. He reached the stone floor at the bottom and surveyed the gloom for somewhere to hang the lamp. A row of nails was fixed into a thick floor joist that ran away into the darkness, each holding its own tool. There was a hammer, two saws and a number of things he couldn’t put a name to. The nearest nail projected out much further than the hammer it held so he hung the lamp right there and ran back upstairs.

  They carried his mother down and sat her against a wall next to a metal loop that was fixed into the stonework. The way she sagged reminded him of how Rag Cat flopped when he tried to prop him up.

  ‘Go to our room and fetch all the bedding you can carry,’ said his father when he saw him staring at her.

  He went without protest, glad for any reason to be out of the cellar. When he returned with blankets draped over his arms he saw that his father had lashed his mother to the metal loop with her hands behind her back. He helped him lay a blanket beneath her and covered her with the other two. She remained limp and lifeless as he tucked the edge of a blanket behind her shoulder. But as he pulled his hand out she whipped her head around and tried to bite his neck, her blood blister eyes lighting his face up with a dull red glow. His father was quicker though. He yanked him away as her mouth snapped shut and she ripped a hole in his nightshirt instead of his throat. They shrank back against the opposite wall as she took to her feet with an impossible jolt – the marionette jerked up by its strings for another performance. But they didn’t linger to see the show. His father picked him up and ran to the stairs. She lunged after them, but her movement was checked by the short length of rope that bound her to the metal loop. As they disappeared up the stairs she raged against her bindings, barking and snarling like an animal.

  His father slammed the cellar door as soon as they were through, muffling but not blocking the noise. Ormis clung on tight when he tried to put him down, so he pulled a chair out and took him onto his lap instead. He kept his head buried in his father’s chest as he listened to the terrible noise, wondering what had happened to the person who tucked him in a few hours earlier.

  Promise

  Ormis watched through the scullery window as his father walked out to meet his apprentice.

  ‘I’m mighty sorry Joel, but I won’t be needing you today. We got the sickness in the house and it’s been running out of us both ends.’

  Joel frowned in sympathy. ‘I could just get on with it if you like. Make a start on that dresser we were getting round to.’

  ‘No leave it,’ his father replied a little too sharply, before softening his voice to compensate. ‘I just think it’ll be better if we do it together. I’ve got another trick or two I wonna show yer. Besides I want to keep the noise down so Jo ’n’ Orm can get some sleep.’ He dug into his pocket, pulled out a couple of coins then dug for some more. ‘It’s not right that you should lose a wage though. Give us a few days eh,’ he said, dropping the coins into Joel’s hand. ‘I’ll come for you when I’ve got my strength back.’

  ‘That’s very good o’ yer Mr Brathra,’ he said as he pocketed the money. He looked towards the house and waved when he saw Ormis in one of the windows. ‘There anything I can getcha? Supplies or something?’

  ‘We’re fine. But thanks for asking. You’re a good lad Joel.’ He brought a hand to his stomach and grimaced. ‘You’d better get along now; seems I’m not emptied yet.’

  ‘Alright,’ he said, stepping back with a frown. ‘But I hope it’s not too long. Be seeing yer.’ He turned and started away down the narrow road that led back to town.

  Ormis looked across at the cellar door, relieved his mother was still quiet. If Joel had heard her barking and mewing, he would have suspected more than just sickness.

  He
had spent all night in the scullery with his father, listening to his mother rage through a whole range of animalistic sounds that had no right coming out of her. The worst of it though were the occasional notes that sounded like her and communicated the pain of her tortured throat. He tried to block the noise by sticking his head between two pillows and pressing them tight to his ears. But it hadn’t helped. All it did was make him more focused on the muffled cries that still got through. In the end he just sat there cuddling his father, hoping the terrible sounds would stop and for his mother to be all better again. His father whispered in his ear several times, assuring him that everything was going to be alright by morning. But when the sun came up and proved him wrong, he just said she needed more time.

  His father came back into the house carrying a pail of water. He hoisted it onto the table and its contents sloshed over the sides. By the look in his eyes he could tell the water was for some purpose other than drinking or washing.

  ‘It exhausts her,’ he said, as if in explanation. It - his father’s first reference to his mother’s possessor.

  ‘What you gonna do Dad?’

  ‘We have to move things along. We’ve got to try one of the old ways.’

  The room was quiet except for the patter of water that dripped off the table. He looked at his father over the top of the pail, trying to grasp his meaning.

  ‘I don’t know how long she can take its punishment. She ain’t slept all night and she’s made her wrists bleed yanking at that damn rope. And that gash on her head. Wound like that needs cleaning and stitching or it’s going to get infected.’